drones
Latest
UK police nab teen using $30,500 drone
Wired recently reported that the UK Home Office is preparing a national fleet of unmanned aircraft, but the surveillance-loving island nation has had a keen interest in drones for quite a while. Now, Merseyside police (who've had a drone of their own for about six months) are bragging about their first ever catch with the new toy. When coppers heard that a suspected car thief was hiding in the bushes, they wasted no time launching their Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with on-board thermal imaging -- which led them to the sixteen year old. In addition to the (alleged) perp, a twenty year old man was arrested in connection with the crime -- but his apprehension was done without aid of the UAV and, as such, not nearly as bad-ass. Both have been released on bail pending further inquiries, and both are believed to be looking into purchasing Parrot AR.Drones for themselves. You gotta fight fire with fire, right? Update: According to the BBC, the thing cost closer to £40,000 (roughly $63,000). That's still a lot of moneys!
US Air Force says decision-making attack drones will be here by 2047
Leave it to the military to dream big. In its recently released "Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047" report, the US Air Force details a drone that could fly over a target and then make the decision whether or not to launch an attack, all without human intervention. The Air Force says that increasingly, humans will monitor situations, rather than be deciders or participants, and that "advances in AI will enable systems to make combat decisions and act within legal and policy constraints without necessarily requiring human input." Programming of the drone will be based on "human intent," with real actual humans monitoring the execution, while retaining the authority and ability to override the system. It's all still extremely vague, with literally no details on exactly how this drone will come into existence, but we do know this: the Air Force plans to have these dudes operational by 2047. We're just holding out to see what those "classified" pages are all about. [Warning: read link is a PDF] [Via PC World] Read -Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047
EVE's call to arms: Thursday fleet battles on test server to help combat lag
EVE Online's latest expansion Quantum Rise brought some new features for the industry crowd, and a few enhancements aimed at PvP pilots as well. But some of the broad changes they've made to the game mechanics have triggered lag, and lots of it, which CCP Games is hoping to combat with the help of the players themselves. CCP Tanis says, "We take this issue very seriously and as a result, our engineering team has been in high-gear working on fixing the problem and we think we are close, but we need your help." The help CCP Games is looking for requires relatively little from players, aside from logging into the Singularity test server and entering the fray, blasting each other apart in battleships. The Wednesday tests were already underway when we got word of this, but they're looking to get a large group of pilots (200 or more) for the Thursday fleet engagements on Singularity. The test will take place on Thursday at 11:00 GMT, and another is tentatively slated for 15:00, dependent upon what CCP learns from the previous fights. CCP Tanis lays out how players can get involved:
When carebears attack
CrazyKinux from The Drone Bay podcast, and of course one of Massively's EVE Online columnists, had an interesting find which he recently shared on his site. "When Carebears Attack" isn't the newest video out there, but given the absolute hammering that miners have been taking in Empire space over the past few months, it's quite timely. Here we see an exhumer pilot named 'JNB' who's fed up with ore thieves and being griefed in general, simply for being a miner. While not technically griefing as it's considered a fair use of game mechanics, 'can flipping' is the time-honored tradition of a thief sneaking up on a mining vessel and replacing the floating cargo container (being mined into for greater efficiency) with his own, bearing the same name. When the miner or his hauler unknowingly removes ore from the thief's can, the innocent party becomes criminally flagged -- ironically, for being a thief himself -- and then is predictably blown apart by his antagonist. Concord, i.e. 'the police' in EVE, takes no action against the can flipper. Tired of this use of game mechanics, the carebear in this video snaps and starts hunting down griefers in a repurposed Hulk, which is little more than a fancy mining vessel; it's completely unfit for PvP... or is it? The footage shows the miner racking up a respectable kill count by using his normally defensive drones as vicious little attackers. It turns out some carebears have teeth after all.
Rogue Signal: The unwritten rules of EVE PvP, part 1
EVE Online is a PvP driven game. It is not merely PvP oriented, nor does it only contain strong PvP overtones. The game, its politics, and its economy, are all controlled by the ever-present PvP that takes place. No matter your path in EVE, you are participating in PvP, be it through market competition with another trader, competition for ore rights with another miner, or the time-honored tradition of turning your opponent into space dust. Staying out of the PvP environment requires a conscious effort. Even the most casual PvE enthusiast is contributing to PvP by selling loot or minerals, and may well become the target of some non-consensual combat. Suffice to say, even though this guide will have some things that will apply only to those looking for a fight, there is something for everyone, since you will get killed, someday. Ignoring these bits of advice is a surefire way to make that inevitable ship loss that much more painful. Also, bear in mind that each and every one of the things I am going to cover here is something that I myself have done in the past. This is not just a guide for noobs, but also a cheat sheet for those of us who get so busy preparing the bigger picture battle, that we forget things that end up making us look like total noobs in the end.
Trinity 1.01 live on EVE server
Trinity 1.01 is now out on Tranquility. Patch notes are right here, or also after the break, if you happen to be at work.Highlights include Mac and Linux stability (and EVE Voice now working under Mac), lots of fixes to drones (shields will no longer regen instantly when recalled to the drone bay, and the tutorial was fixed), and a special note, way down at the bottom: "No Windows files were harmed during the creation or deployment of this patch." Ha-- let's hope so. I'm jumping in right now to get some mining done (let's see how that Astrogeology V that I just finished helps out-- if you see anything cool changed in the game, note it in the comments below.Update: Well that's a bummer-- looks like they also fixed the mining sound issue. Too bad-- I really liked a) not having that grinding noise going all the time, and b) getting a little alert when my lasers had pulled in ore.
CCP proposes rebalancing capital ships/carriers - reactions mixed
Zulupark, one of the newer game-designers at CCP, has broached a new notion for balancing capital ships in EVE Online. It's a balancing change, so you can immediately expect a few happy people, a few sad ones, a few threatening to cancel their accounts, and some who already have without waiting to see how it will all pan out, if the changes go ahead anyway - the proposed changes did go live on the test server yesterday. The basic notion is that capital ships that are equipped with drones and/or fighters have their control of those limited to align them more with a support role than the turn-your-ship-into-a-charred- hole-in-the-void-in-two-seconds role. %Gallery-8888%
UK to get even more Big Brother with hovering drones
With literally hundreds of thousands of cameras -- some sporting speakers and microphones -- trained on its poor citizens from the moment they step out of the house in the morning until their hasty retreat inside at night, we're not sure why the UK needs yet another set of eyes scoping out so-called 'anti-social behaviour' among the populace, but that isn't stopping the vanguard of Big Brother technology from deploying its first unmanned police drone next month. In what is being perhaps optimistically billed as just a three-month trial, Merseyside police will unleash a one-meter wide, night-vision camera-equipped mini-helicopter into the skies (up to 500-meters high) above their jurisdiction, and task it with gathering evidence for court cases as well as the less glamorous job of monitoring traffic congestion. Originally built for the military by a Germany company and called the 'hicam microdrone,' these repurposed mechanical bobbies can either be controlled by an operator via remote or set to patrol autonomously using their built-in GPS nav systems. You'll recall that a similar system being considered by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department was shot down by the FAA around this time last year, proving once again that up-and-coming British criminals could probably minimize their risks of incarceration by making the move Stateside. [Via The Register, pic courtesy of microdrones GmbH, thanks Paul J. and rastrus]
Wii + UPS = BFF [update 1]
Fearless Joystiq reader Travisty of Justice braved the rain and was on hand in Atlanta today to witness UPS officially deliver the first shipment of Wiis to Best Buy. It's a snoozetastic corporate photo op, but hey ... you're just a few short days away from seeing those in stores. Baby steps.He ventured outside to talk to the folks waiting through drizzle in the PS3 line, but when he asked if they were buying one to keep or to sell on eBay, they gave him the brushoff. Maybe they were afraid this Best Buy would boot them out of line. Release the corporate hounds!Check out the video of the event after the jump. Someone, please start hiring spokespeople with a little razzle-dazzle, okay?[Thanks, Travisty][Update: fixed spelling, d'oh!]
Flying suicide bomber drones could be almost unstoppable
If you thought the 12-gauge shotgun-wielding AutoCopter was bad news, imagine one of the little menaces in the hands of a terrorist and strapped with several pounds of explosives -- or worse, biological, chemical, or radiological payloads. Several experts are warning that we are nearly defenseless against such attacks, even though terrorists have already shown a propensity for using such tactics in the Middle East and South America, and are known to have purchased so-called "drone" airplanes capable of high-precision navigation even over long distances. One scenario that is particularly disturbing involves a fleet of drones or robotic helicopters launched from an off-shore freighter, sent en masse to attack a large gathering like a sporting event where stampeding from panic would likely cause more deaths than the bombs themselves. The Pentagon is supposedly working on an drone-killing drone of its own, called Peregrine, that would patrol the skies and intercept any hostile aircraft -- but the main problem seems to be finding, not destroying these things, and you'd need a whole lot of Peregrines to cover every potential target in the US.[Via Phys Org]
